


Hands Towards the Light

by tieria



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: F/F, Series Swap, Yugioh Femslash Week 2017, zexal au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 05:49:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9308174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tieria/pseuds/tieria
Summary: Snippets of a Zexal AU in which Ruri is Yuuma, Rin is Astral, and it's all too easy to fall a bit in love.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A re-edit of the work by me of the same name posted in July that I took down soon after. It takes bits and pieces of the plot in Zexal up to around episode 20 or so, I believe.

I.

Ruri could smell the scent of rain on the late spring breeze as she leaned out the open attic window, catching her hair about her shoulders. She held up the pendant of her long necklace, the key catching the valiant rays of light peeking through the dark clouds. Ruri admired the polished gold as it glinted and turned. To her, it was more than a memento of her parents dredged up from a dusty corner of her attic bedroom, or a simple good-luck charm- there was a secret hidden somewhere, someplace regarding it, and Ruri wasn’t keen on secrets being kept from her.

“Ruri!” came a yell from downstairs, “let’s go! We’re going to be late!”

Dropping the key back around her neck, Ruri burst into a flurry of motion. She slung her schoolbag over one shoulder and gathered up her deck, taking an extra moment to tuck it neatly into the side pocket of her bag. “Wait, wait! I still have to do my hair!”

“Why do you have so much of it, then?” Shun yelled up at her as she grabbed her hair ties and pins and raced down the stairs, tying her hair up as she went.

“Just because you look bad with long hair doesn't mean everyone else in this house has to,” Ruri replied, tucking the pin in her hairbow and giving her head an experimental shake. She frowned, feeling the balance shift to the left.

“Here,” said Shun, walking up behind her from the kitchen and dropping his bag to the side, “let me fix it.”

True to his word, Shun fixed her lopsided bow and pinned it in place. Ruri spun to face him, key shifting on its cord around her neck. “Thank you.”

Shun made a vague noise of acknowledgement, and together they started out the door. It was a familiar walk, their footsteps burning a familiar trail towards school- and though Ruri did not know it then, it would be the last with just the two of them for quite a long time.

II.

Ruri caught the key, and a green glow tinged with ocean blue and white burst into being around her, blinding and not unlike the sun. It was fitting, then, that the clouds broke into pouring rain, quick and without warning. Ruri could feel the chill of it, sheets of cold rain seeping into her clothes, weighing down the fabric of her long sleeves.

And then, like the storm clouds had parted above her head, the rain vanished, the cling of cotton to her arm dry and comfortable again. Ruri blinked. Before her stood a grand gate, burning with that same glow of the key.

“ _Will you pass?”_ came a voice, echoing through her head low and powerful, like the roll of distant thunder. _“If you pass, you will be given the means to understanding the mystery that consumes you. However... something valuable will be taken from you.”_

“Something valuable?” Ruri said, even her loudest voice dwarfed in the face of the otherworldly presence before her.

_“Yes. It will be the thing most important to you, and it will be taken when you need it most.”_

“That’s an awful deal, you know… But I’ll go,” she said, raising her voice to a shout as she slipped the key into the lock, “and you won’t take anything from me. I won’t _let_ you.”

The distant voice laughed, and the thunder in Ruri’s head split the sky. _“We will see, child. We will see.”_

Light flooded from the doors as they creaked open, causing the ground to shudder and fall apart around Ruri’s feet. Taking it as a challenge, Ruri dashed forwards, hand outstretched towards the blue glow obscuring the world beyond the door. The crumbling earth rose up to meet her in the absence of wings, and Ruri leapt through the open gates. As she passed the threshold, the glow consumed her, too, and she screwed her eyes shut against it, waiting for the light to recede-

Ruri jolted forwards slightly, her arm rising to meet something she couldn’t remember. She shivered, slightly, feeling soaked to the bone. “What was that?”

With sudden realization that left her heart stuttering, Ruri grasped at the key around her neck, cold fingers scrambling to grip the oddly warm metal. She took comfort in its familiar weight in her hand.

A glow in the corner of her vision caught her eye, and she looked up to find a girl floating above her head, glowing a gentle sea-green around her thin frame. “And who, exactly, are you?”

The girl looked pensive for a moment, crossing her arms and looking off into the distance with eyes shifting like liquid amber. She made an utterly captivating picture, like some sort of spirit, ancient and wise, a statue carved of marble and doused in moonlight- the girl shrugged, a slow roll of her shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t…”

The girl shifted her gaze to Ruri, and Ruri stared back, caught somewhere between stunned and intrigued. “No. My memories are missing. But I think…” the girl raised a bare hand, slightly transparent, and clenched it tight.

Ruri’s gaze snapped to her sparse extra deck as it burst into answering light, almost too brilliant to watch- but the light twisted, danced, solidified into something solid and real as the rest burst and faded away in a glimmer of light, like a monster vanishing to the grave.

“My name,” the girl said, floating close over Ruri’s shoulder, “I remember. It’s Rin. And that is...”

Ruri dropped the key back around her neck, reaching carefully for her extra deck. She tentatively touched the card. When it didn’t disappear, she picked it up, turning it towards her. The card between Ruri’s fingers still radiated a subtle light, like something ethereal and otherworldly. “Number 39,” Ruri finished, quiet, “Heavenly Empress Hope.”

Rin hummed, her agreement quiet and drowned out by the sound of a siren in the distance. Startled back into reality, Ruri looked up as the rain trailed off to a drizzle, but her opponent had long since fled for cover, their duel left unfinished. “Well,” she said to the ghostly girl above her, “I guess we should go somewhere and talk about this. Right, Rin?”

III.

Rin, in many ways, was distant. She lurked inside the key for most of the day as Ruri went about her business… until it came to duels. If she knew nothing else about the strange girl who had come to haunt her, it was that Rin loved to duel. The girl had a talent for it, and a passion that even she herself seemed not to fully understand. And Ruri- Ruri resented it, initially. Rin seemed intent on critiquing her every move, backseat dueling incessantly, whatever strategy Ruri wanted to pursue be damned- but at some point, the tides began to change.

Rin was a strategist, at heart, planning three turns ahead at any given moment, while Ruri was best at the minutia, at seeing Rin’s goal and _getting them there_ , by whatever means necessary. When they set aside their respective prides, they worked well together, ending every duel- even the hardest, the closest- with a smile and a hand extended to the loser. One Number turned to two and two to four, and things hit a steady pace as Ruri dragged Allen and Sayaka into the hunt with her. With every card they recovered, Ruri watched as Rin grew just that much more animated, that much more certain of herself. (And, well, that didn’t help the backseat dueling, but some things, Ruri figured, just had to be endured.)

IV.

Rin hovered upside-down over Ruri’s hammock, watching as she shuffled through the Numbers cards they’d already managed to collect.

“What memory is this one?” Ruri asked, holding the card between index and middle finger and turning its face towards Rin. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant-looking card- _Number 30_ , _Acid Golem of Destruction_ \- a looming monster covered in open circuitry. Ruri grimaced at the memory of staring through her d-gazer and watching as it bled acid over the rest of her monsters, as she and Rin had to race against time to defeat its effect.

_Thank goodness,_ she thought, _that we don’t have to bicker over every single turn anymore._ She resisted the urge to smile at the memory of how silly some of their arguments had been. And yet still, they had won with smiles across their faces, proud and wide.

Unaware of Ruri’s musings, Rin’s eyes slipped closed as she lost herself in recollection. Without the glowing amber of her eyes, Ruri thought that Rin looked paler than a ghost. If she reached out a hand, she wondered, to brush at the subtle marks on Rin’s cheeks, would her fingers find something soft, like flesh, or would they slip straight through, like they do the aura that surrounds the girl? She was about to forget herself, to finally muster up the courage to try, when Rin began to speak, and Ruri startled back to reality.

“I remember a city. Its towers that pierce the clouds shine with white light, and the streets sprawl out from its heart like the web from a spider. Life moves quickly, and there is value in moving forwards, no matter the cost. There is nothing but luxury there.”

“It sounds beautiful,” Ruri said, imagining a place like a heavenly utopia. “Is that your home?”

Rin’s eyes flicked open, troubled and still distant. “No. It is a place we wanted to reach.”

“We?” Ruri asked, but Rin only shook her head and faded, disappearing into the key.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have asked, Ruri thought tracing a finger over the key’s golden ridges. Ten Numbers were barely a tenth of what they needed to recover together.

_Living only remembering a tenth of your life_ , Ruri thought, feeling a sudden wave of melancholy rush over her.

“We’ll get all the Numbers,” Ruri whispered, “I promise you.”

V.

It happened for the first time while they were out shopping, Ruri and Sayaka looking for new summer dresses while Rin critiqued their fashion sense- “You don’t even wear clothes,” Ruri quipped, and Rin crossed her arms. When Ruri looked over at her from under the brim of a woven straw hat, she swore she caught sight of a dusty, evergreen blush on her cheeks.

“That doesn’t mean my fashion sense is bad,” Rin replied, and Ruri, well- Ruri couldn’t deny it. The clothes that Rin had picked for her in the previous shop were undeniably of a fashionable cut, in soft colors with bright accents that Rin said complimented her eyes.

The moment the compliment was on her lips, a tremor wracked the ground, stealing it from her- and any words she could have said were drowned out by the sound of an explosion from afar.

“Do you think it’s-” Sayaka started, just as Rin turned sharply to the left, her posture tense- “A Number.”

“It came from the parking lot!” Sayaka said from behind them, and Ruri tore the hat from her head abruptly, then raced out of the store, pushing against the crowd. The parking lot was where Allen was supposed to meet them, and quiet panic raced through her veins, multiplying with each beat of her heart that she couldn’t make progress against the bystanders. The impulses of the Numbers and their owners had only been growing more dangerous, more powerful and less inhibited, and if anything happened to Allen-

Ruri burst through the crowd, surrounded only by stragglers, and her breath caught low in her throat as she took it all in- a car, burning in the corner of the parking lot, Allen, pushing his older sister forwards, the terrified smile of the possessed duelist behind the wheel of another car as it hurtled towards Allen and Anna-

“Allen!” she shrieked, knowing there was no way to cross the distance in time but racing forwards regardless-

And then Allen was in her arms, Anna safely on the other side of the now-stopped car, where a decidedly old man now sat in the driver’s seat- and in the middle of it all, a strange boy who hadn’t been there a moment ago.

“Ruri,” Rin said, pointing at him- and there, in his hand, Ruri caught sight of a familiar black bordered card.

“Take your sister and get out of here,” Ruri said, silently pleading with Allen to comply, and stepped towards the unknown boy with more confidence than she actually felt.

“Thank you for helping my friends, but I need to ask you for that card. It’s important that I get it.”

“A Numbers Hunter?” the boy muttered, turning sharp eyes at Ruri, who resisted the urge to flinch away and stood her ground. “Then duel me for it.”

“That sounds good to me,” Ruri replied, pulling her d-gazer from her pocket and readying her disk. “Let’s do this.”

They soon learned that the strange boy’s name was Kaito, and that his symbol was a dragon to Rin and Ruri’s Empress. Kaito’s Galaxy Eyes was a proud beast, strong and regal and brimming with the stardust that ran through its veins. Ruri found this out firsthand as the force of its direct attack blew her down, her back hitting the pavement.

As she pulled herself back to her feet, Ruri brushed off her skirt, rolled back her shoulders- Kaito, somewhere along the line, had started to remind her of Shun, and she had underestimated her new opponent.

“Rin,” she said, “Let’s win this.” But she couldn’t feel Rin’s presence over her shoulder, didn’t catch sight of the gentle aura that surrounded her. Ruri turned, and her heart ran cold. Rin floated low over the ground, clutching at her own chest with hazy fingertips. She was flickering her silhouette hazy, and Ruri raced to her side, dropping to her knees and hands hovering uselessly over her fading friend. “Rin? Rin, what’s wrong?”

“Life... points,” Rin bit out, turning near-invisible for one long, terrifying moment, where Ruri’s heart stopped and she didn’t dare to breathe lest she scatter Rin to the breeze- “if they hit, zero, I’ll-”

Rin shot Ruri a look brimming with a silent plea, and vanished into the key again as Ruri stood with fire in her veins.

Five hundred life points. Five hundred life points between Rin and disappearance. Five hundred life points that she would protect with her own soul, if need be.

“So you’re the one-” Kaito said, but was interrupted by a chirp from the device around his free wrist. He listened for a moment, expression turning dark. “Haruto is-!” Kaito turned his back, Galaxy Eyes shimmering and fading from his side of the field. (The familiarity, again. He’s not a bad person, Ruri thought distantly.)

As Kaito flew into the sky without a second glance at their battlefield, the flames of adrenaline faded abruptly. A long breath escaped her, and Ruri dropped back to her knees, weak with relief. At her side, Rin slipped from the key, looking a bit disoriented but otherwise whole and _here_.

“This whole time?” Ruri said, unable to focus on anything but the curve of the curb in front of her, “I was playing with your life on the line this whole time? Why didn’t you ever _tell me_?”

“I didn’t want you to stop smiling when you dueled,” Rin replied, uncharacteristically soft, and Ruri took a long breath before meeting Rin’s eyes.

“I won’t stop,” Ruri replied, wishing desperately that she could clasp Rin’s hands in reassurance, the way she could with Sayaka, “I promise you. I will _never_ stop, as long as you’re with me.”

VI.

They trained. They trained and strategized and trained again until Ruri thought her fingers fit to bleed the way she had heard pro duelist tell joking stories of.

“You should rest,” Rin said, circling close around Ruri’s shoulders with a nervous air to the white aura hovering close over her skin.

Ruri shook her head and drew another card, staring down the makeshift scenario she’d created. Kaito would have his Galaxy Eyes on the field, two face downs. Her field was empty, Hope waiting and ready in her extra deck. All she needed was two level 4s, and she’d just drawn one of them- “Later.”

“You should rest,” Rin repeated, this time more demanding than suggesting.

“I have to make sure I can protect you,” Ruri finally said, and met Rin’s eyes with a defiant glare.

Rin kept her gaze for a moment, then broke into a small smile. Ruri thought it impossibly fond, somehow. “And you can’t do anything if you’re passed out when the Number Hunters come, okay? So go to sleep. Your scenario will still be there in the morning.”

With the utmost of reluctance, Ruri allowed Rin to herd her off to bed.

“Thank you, Ruri,” she was sure she heard from the key as she fell asleep. She wouldn’t remember in the morning, but the words set a flutter and a warmth in her heart. It was a quiet feeling, a warmth that had started to grow familiar when Rin was around, following Ruri through her day outside the key. Ruri sank into the emotion and feel into an easy sleep. Rather than the nightmares of losing to Kaito that had plagued her since that day, her dreams, that night, were pleasant.

VII.

Rin called the new power _chaos_ , but no, Ruri thought, watching as Hope folded her wings and tucked her sword at her waist before ascending into a shimmering white light, this was something too beautiful to be called _chaotic_. Hope burst from the skies anew, wings dappled with pieces of green and blue like fragments of stained glass, sword humming with energy as she drew it against the opposing Number.

_Beautiful_ , it seemed to Ruri, glancing from Hope to Rin at her side, born from the same matter as Rin, exuding same sort of enchantment that had first drawn her to the other girl-

_Beautiful_ , Ruri thought, staring at Rin, and came to the quiet conclusion that she would call that gentle emotion in her _love_.

VIII.

“Do you trust me?” Rin asked, laying her hand over Ruri’s splayed palm. There were a thousand things that Ruri could say to that- _if I didn’t, I would have given the key away a long time ago; I would follow you to another world, if you asked me to;  of course I do, you big idiot-_

What she said was- “Always.”

(The touch of her fingers was cool, like dipping her palm into the chill of the river on a humid summer day.)

And where there had once been two, there was now one, a white-winged angel in a flowing dress and a fashionable jacket, mark beneath one of her cheeks, amber eyes framed by the long hair glowing free over her shoulders.

“This,” the girl said, two voices overlaid, “is our hope.”


End file.
